Development and application of the semantic annotation framework for digital images

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to semantically annotate the content of digital images with the use of Semantic Web technologies and thus facilitate retrieval, integration and knowledge discovery. Design/Methodology/Approach After a review and comparison of the existing semantic annotation models for images and a deep analysis of the characteristics of the content of images, a multi-dimensional and hierarchical general semantic annotation framework for digital images was proposed. On this basis, taking histories images, advertising images and biomedical images as examples, by integrating the characteristics of images in these specific domains with related domain knowledge, the general semantic annotation framework for digital images was customized to form a domain annotation ontology for the images in a specific domain. The application of semantic annotation of digital images, such as semantic retrieval, visual analysis and semantic reuse, were also explored. Findings The results showed that the semantic annotation framework for digital images constructed in this paper provided a solution for the semantic organization of the content of images. On this basis, deep knowledge services such as semantic retrieval, visual analysis can be provided. Originality/Value The semantic annotation framework for digital images can reveal the fine-grained semantics in a multi-dimensional and hierarchical way, which can thus meet the demand for enrichment and retrieval of digital images.